Let It Come Down

by Paul Bowles

  “Dear Abdelmalek!” Daisy cried delightedly, seizing his two hands. “What a lovely party! This is Mr. Dyar of New York.” He shook Dyar’s hand warmly. “It is very kind of the Marquesa to bring you to my home,” he said. Daisy was already greeting other friends; M. Beidaoui, still grasping Dyar’s hand, led him to a nearby corner where he presented him to his brother Hassan, a tall chocolate-coloured gentleman also clothed in white robes. They spoke a minute about America, and Dyar was handed a whisky and soda by a servant. As his hosts turned away to give their attention to a new arrival, he began to look about him. The room was large, comfortable and dark, being lighted only by candles that rested in massive candelabra placed here and there on the floor. It was irregularly shaped, and the music and dancing were going on in a part hidden from his vision. Along the walls nearby were wide, low divans occupied exclusively by women, all of whom looked over forty, he noted, and certain of whom were surely at least seventy. Apart from the Beidaoui brothers there were only two other Arabs in view. One was talking to Daisy by an open window and the other was joking with a fat Frenchman in a corner. In spite of the Beidaouis, whom he rather liked, he felt smothered and out of place, and he wished he had not come.

  As Dyar was about to move off and see who was taking part in the dancing, Hassan tapped him on the arm. “This is Madame Werth,” he said. “You speak French?” The dark-eyed woman in black to whom he was being presented smiled.

  “No,” said Dyar, confused. “It does not matter,” she said. “I speak a little English.” “You speak very well,” said Dyar, offering her a cigarette. He had the feeling that someone had spoken to him about her, but he could not remember who, or what it was that had been said. They conversed a while, standing there with their drinks, in the same spot where they had been introduced, and the idea persisted that he knew something about her which he was unable to call to mind. He had no desire to be stuck with her all evening, but for the moment he saw no way out. And she had just told him that she was in mourning for her husband; she looked rather forlorn, and he felt sorry for her. Suddenly he saw Eunice Goode’s flushed face appear in the doorway. “How do you do?” she said to Hassan Beidaoui. Behind her was Hadija, looking very smart indeed. “How do you do?” said Hadija, with the identical inflection of Eunice Goode. A third woman entered with them, small and grim-faced, who scarcely acknowledged the greeting extended to her, but immediately began to inspect the guests with care, one by one, as if taking a rapid inventory of the qualities and importance of each. There was not enough light for the colour of her hair to be noticeable, so, since no one seemed to know her, no one paid her any attention for the moment. Dyar was too much astonished at seeing Hadija to continue his conversation; he stood staring at her. Eunice Goode held her by the hand and was talking very fast to Hassan.

  “You’ll be interested to know that one of my dearest friends was Crown Prince Rupprecht. We were often at Karlsbad together. I believe he knew your father.” As the rush of words went on, Hassan’s face showed increasing lack of comprehension; he moved backward a step after each few sentences, saying: “Yes, yes,” but she followed along, pulling Hadija with her, until she had backed him against the wall and Dyar could no longer hear what she was saying. Somewhat embarrassed, he again became conscious of Madame Werth’s presence beside him.

  “—and I hope you will come to make a visit to me when I am returning from Marrakech,” she was saying.

  “Thank you, I’d like very much to.” It was then that he recalled where he had heard her name. The cancelled reservation at the hotel there which he had been going to give to Daisy had originally been Madame Werth’s.

  “Do you know Marrakech?” she asked him. He said he did not. “Ah, you must go. In the winter it is beautiful. You must have a room at the Mamounia, but the room must have a view on the mountains, the snow, you know, and a terrace above the garden. I would love to go tomorrow, but the Mamounia is always full now and my reservation is not before the twentieth of the month.”

  Dyar looked at her very hard. She noticed the difference in his expression, and was slightly startled.

  “You’re going to the Hotel Mamounia in Marrakech on the twentieth?” he said. Then, seeing the suggestion of bewilderment on her face, he looked down at her drink. “Yours is nearly finished,” he remarked. “Let me get you another.” She was pleased; he excused himself and went across the room with a glass in each hand.

  It all made perfectly good sense. Now at last he understood Daisy’s request of him and the secrecy with which she had surrounded it. Madame Werth would simply have been told that there had been a most regrettable misunderstanding, and Wilcox’s office would have been blamed, but the Marquesa de Valverde would already have been installed in the room and there would have been no dislodging her. As he realized how close he had come to doing her the favour he felt a rush of fury against her. “The bitch!” he said between his teeth. The little revelation was unpleasant, and it somehow extended itself to the whole room and everyone in it.

  He saw Daisy out of the corner of his eye as he passed the divan where she sat; she was talking to a pale young man with spectacles and a girl with a wild head of red hair. As he was on his way back she caught sight of him and called out: “Mr. Dyar! When you’ve made your delivery I want you to come over here.” He held the glasses up higher and grinned. “Just a second,” he said. He was wondering if Madame Werth would be capable of the same sort of throat-slitting behaviour as Daisy, and decided against the likelihood of it. She looked too helpless, which was doubtless precisely why Daisy had singled her out as a likely prospective victim.

  Back, standing again beside Madame Werth, he said as she sipped her new drink: “Do you know the Marquesa de Valverde?”

  Madame Werth seemed enthusiastic. “Ah, what a delightful woman! Such vivacity! And very kind. I have seen her pick out from the street young dogs, poor thin ones with bones, and take them to her home and care for them. The entire world is her charity.”

  Dyar laughed abruptly; it must have sounded derisive, for Madame Werth said accusingly: “You think kindness does not matter?”

  “Sure it matters. It’s very important.” At the moment he felt expansive and a little reckless; it would be pleasurable to sit beside Daisy and worry her. She could not see whom he was talking to from where she sat, and he wanted to watch her reaction when he told her. Presently a Swiss gentleman joined them and began speaking with Madame Werth in French. Dyar slipped away, finishing his drink quickly and getting another before he went over to the divan where Daisy was.

  “Two compatriots of yours,” she said, moving over so he could squeeze in beside her. “Mr. Dyar. Mrs. Holland, Mr. Richard Holland.” The two acknowledged the introduction briefly, with what seemed more diffidence than coldness.

  “We were talking about New York,” said Daisy. “Mr. and Mrs. Holland are from New York, and they say they feel quite as much at home here as they do there. I told them that was scarcely surprising, since Tangier is more New York than New York. Don’t you agree?”

  Dyar looked at her closely; then he looked at Mrs. Holland, who met his gaze for a startled instant and began to inspect her shoes. Mr. Holland was staring at him with great seriousness, like a doctor about to arrive at a diagnosis, he thought. “I don’t think I see what you mean,” said Dyar. “Tangier like New York? How come?”

  “In spirit,” said Mr. Holland with impatience. “Not in appearance, naturally. Are you from New York? I thought Madame de Valverde said you were.” Dyar nodded. “Then you must see how alike the two places are. The life revolves wholly about the making of money. Practically everyone is dishonest. In New York you have Wall Street, here you have the Bourse. Not like the bourses in other places, but the soul of the city, its raison d’être. In New York you have the slick financiers, here the money-changers. In New York you have your racketeers. Here you have your smugglers. And each man’s waiting to suck the blood of the next. It’s not really such a far-fetched comparison, is it
?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dyar. At first he had thought he agreed, but then the substance of Holland’s argument had seemed to slip away from him. He took a long swallow of whisky. The phonograph was playing Mamá Inez. “I guess there are plenty of untrustworthy people here, all right,” he said.

  “Untrustworthy!” cried Mr. Holland. “The place is a model of corruption!”

  “But darling,” Daisy interrupted, “Tangier’s a one-horse town that happens to have its own government. And you know damned well that all governments live on corruption. I don’t care what sort—socialist, totalitarian, democratic—it’s all the same. Naturally in a little place like this you come in contact with the government constantly. God knows, it’s inevitable. And so you’re always conscious of the corruption. It’s that simple.”

  Dyar turned to her. “I was just talking with Madame Werth over there.” Daisy looked at him calmly for a moment. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking. Then she laughed. “I being the sort of person I am, and you being the sort of person you are, I think we can skip over that. Tell me, Mrs. Holland, have you read The Thousand and One Nights?”

  “The Mardrus translation,” said Mrs. Holland without looking up.

  “All of it?”

  “Well, not quite. But most.”

  “And do you adore it?”

  “Well, I admire it terribly. But Dick’s the one who loves it. It’s a little direct for me, but then I suppose the culture had no nuances either.”

  Dyar had finished his drink and was again thinking of getting in to where the dancing was going on. He sat still, hoping the conversation might somehow present him with a possibility of withdrawing gracefully. Daisy was addressing Mr. Holland. “Have you ever noticed how completely illogical the end of each one of those thousand and one nights actually is? I’m curious to know.”

  “Illogical?” said Mr. Holland. “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, my dear! Really! Doesn’t it say, at the end of each night: ‘And Schahrazade perceiving the dawn, discreetly became silent’?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then doesn’t it say: ‘And the King and Schahrazade went to bed and remained locked in one another’s arms until morning’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t that rather a short time? Especially for Arabs?”

  Mrs. Holland directed an oblique upward glance at Daisy, and returned to the contemplation of her feet.

  “I think you misunderstand the time-sequence,” said Mr. Holland, sitting up straight with a sudden spasmodic movement, as if he were getting prepared for a discussion. Dyar got quickly to his feet. He had decided he did not like Mr. Holland, who he imagined found people agreeable to the extent that they were interested in hearing him expound his theories. Also he was a little disappointed to find that Daisy had met his challenge with such bland complacency. “She didn’t bat an eyelash,” he thought. It had been no fun at all to confront her with the accusation. Or perhaps she had not even recognized his remark as such. The idea occurred to him as he reached the part of the room where the phonograph was, but he rejected it. Her reply could have meant only that she admitted she had been found out, and did not care. She was even more brazen than he had imagined. For no particular reason, knowing this depressed him, put him back into the grey mood of despair he had felt the night of his arrival on the boat, enveloped him in the old uneasiness.

  A few couples were moving discreetly about the small floor-space, doing more talking than dancing. As Dyar stood watching the fat Frenchman swaying back and forth on his feet, trying to lead an elderly English woman in a turban who had taken a little too much drink, Abdelmalek Beidaoui came up to him bringing with him a tall Portuguese girl, cadaver-thin and with a cast in one eye. It was obvious that she wanted to dance, and she accepted with eagerness. Although she kept her hips against his as they danced, she leant sharply backward from the waist and peered at him fixedly while she told him bits of gossip about the people in the other part of the room. In speaking she kept her lips drawn back so that her gums were fully visible. “Jesus, I’ve got to get out of here,” Dyar thought. But they went on, record after record. At the close of a samba, he said to her, panting somewhat exaggeratedly: “Tired?” “No, no!” she cried. “You are marvellous dancer.”

  Here and there candles had begun to go out; the room was chilly, and a damp wind came through the open door from the garden. It was that moment of the evening when everyone had arrived and no one had yet thought of going home; one could have said that the party was in full swing, save that there was a peculiar deadness about the gathering which made it difficult to believe that a party was actually in progress. Later, in retrospect, one might be able to say that it had taken place, but now, while it still had not finished, it was somehow not true.

  The Portuguese girl was telling him about Estoril, and how Monte Carlo even at its zenith never had been so glamorous. If at that moment someone had not taken hold of his arm and yanked on it violently he would probably have said something rather rude. As it was, he let go of the girl abruptly and turned to face Eunice Goode, who was by then well primed with martinis. She was looking at the frowning Portuguese girl with a polite leer. “I’m afraid you’ve lost your dancing partner,” she said, steadying herself by putting one hand against the wall. “He’s coming with me into the other room.”

  Under ordinary circumstances Dyar would have told her she was mistaken, but right now the idea of sitting down with a drink, even with Eunice Goode along, seemed the preferable, the less strenuous of two equally uninteresting prospects. He excused himself lamely, letting her lead him away across the room into a small, dim library whose walls were lined to the ceiling with greying encyclopaedias, reference books and English novels. Drawn up around a fireplace with no fire in it were three straight-backed chairs, in one of which sat Madame Jouvenon, staring ahead of her into the cold ashes. She did not turn round when she heard them come into the room.

  E

  “Here we are,” said Eunice brightly, and she introduced the two, sitting down so that Dyar occupied the chair between them.

  XI

  For a few minutes Eunice valiantly made conversation; she asked questions of them both and answered for both. The replies were doubtless not the ones that either Madame Jouvenon or Dyar would have given, but in their respective states of confusion and apathy they said: “Ah, yes” and “That’s right” when she took it upon herself to explain to each how the other felt. Dyar was bored, somewhat drunk, and faintly alarmed by Madame Jouvenon’s preoccupation, while she, desperately desirous of gaining his interest, was casting about frantically in her mind for a proper approach. With each minute that passed, the absurd situation in the cold little library became more untenable. Dyar shifted about on his chair and tried to see behind him through the doorway into the other room; he hoped to catch sight of Hadija. Someone put on a doleful Egyptian record. The groaning baritone voice filled the air.

  “You have been to Cairo?” said Madame Jouvenon suddenly.

  “No.” It did not seem enough to answer, but he had no further inspiration.

  “You are inter-r-rested in the Middle East, also?”

  “Madame Jouvenon has spent most of her life in Constantinople and Baghdad and Damascus, and other fascinating places,” said Eunice.

  “Not Baghdad,” corrected Madame Jouvenon sternly. “Bokhara.”

  “That must be interesting,” said Dyar.

  The Egyptian record was interrupted in mid-lament, and a French music-hall song replaced it. Then there was the sound of one of the heavy candelabra being overturned, accompanied by little cries of consternation. Taking advantage of the moment, which he felt might not present itself again even if he waited all night, Dyar sprang to his feet and rushed to the door. Directly behind him came Madame Jouvenon, picking at his sleeve. She had decided to be bold. If, as Eunice Goode claimed, the young man was short of funds, it was likely he would accept an invitation to a meal, and so she pro
mptly extended one for the following day, making it clear that he was to be her guest. “That’s a splendid idea,” said Eunice hurriedly. “I’m sure you two will have a great deal to give each other. Mr. Dyar has been in the consular service for years, and you probably have dozens of mutual friends.” He did not even bother to correct her: she was too far gone, he thought. He had just had a glimpse of Hadija dancing with one of the Beidaoui brothers, and he turned to Madame Jouvenon to decline her kind invitation. But he was not quick enough.

  “At two tomorrow. At the Empire. You know where this is. The food is r-rather good. I will have the table at end, by where the bar is. This will give me gr-reat pleasure. We cannot speak here.” And so it was settled, and he escaped to the table of drinks and got another.

  “You rather bungled that,” Eunice Goode murmured.

  Madame Jouvenon looked at her. “You mean he will not come?”

  “I shouldn’t if I were he. Your behaviour …” She stopped on catching sight of Hadija engaged in a rumba with Hassan Beidaoui; they smiled fatuously as they wriggled about. “The little idiot,” she thought. The sight was all too reminiscent of the Bar Lucifer. “She’s surely speaking Arabic with him.” Uneasily she walked toward the dance floor, and presently was gratified to hear Hadija cry: “Oh, yes!” to something Hassan had said.

  Without being invited this time, Dyar went and sat down beside Daisy. The room seemed immense, and much darker. He was feeling quite drunk; he slid down into a recumbent position and stretched his legs out straight in front of him, his head thrown back so that he was staring up at the dim white ceiling far above. Richard Holland sat in a chair facing Daisy, holding forth, with his wife nestling on the floor at his feet, her head on his knee. The old English lady with the turban was at the other end of the divan, smoking a cigarette in a very long, thin holder.